We compared Dell Avamar and IBM Spectrum Protect based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. IBM Spectrum Protect is highly regarded for its ability to integrate with tape libraries and its customization options. Users also praised Spectrum Protect for its compatibility with various products, scalability, and stability. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface. IBM Spectrum Protect could improve its integration with cloud services and make its interface more user-friendly.
Service and Support: Some customers express satisfaction with Dell support, but others said there is room for improvement. IBM’s customer service is described as high quality, friendly, knowledgeable, and responsive. At the same time, some said the support process can be lengthy.
Ease of Deployment: Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary. IBM Spectrum Protect's initial setup is challenging and demands skilled professionals to configure multiple parameters and features. This process can be time-consuming.
Pricing: Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive. IBM Spectrum Protect is considered expensive. The pricing model is complex, taking into account factors like processor type and volume.
ROI: Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression. Users have realized benefits from IBM Spectrum Protect’s data protection and retrieval. They appreciate its ability to reduce storage requirements with larger tape sizes.
Comparison Results: Dell Avamar is a scalable solution that offers excellent data compression and fast compression. However, Avamar earned mixed reviews for support, deployment, and pricing. Users also requested better Azure and bare-metal backups and restoration capabilities. IBM Spectrum Protect is a reliable, customizable solution that allows smooth integration with tape libraries. At the same time, some say that the user interface could be more intuitive and Spectrum Protect could integrate better with the cloud.
"We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company."
"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups."
"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Stable and scalable backup and recovery software, with good technical support."
"Every time customers make a change or we have made a change, then they use the product to do a cloning and refreshing. They are happy that they get good performance something changes."
"We have been using it for several years, and it is quite reliable and predictable. We are quite comfortable with this solution. They're coming up with new features as well. It has good scalability, and it provides good integrations with business-critical applications or databases, such as SAP HANA. It works as expected, and we don't see any issues."
"The deduplication and compression features are the most valuable features."
"They have recently added support tickets specifically engineered around performance. This has been very useful for us when we run into issues where customers are looking to try to squeeze a lot more horsepower out of older system."
"One of the main things that I like about IBM is the versioning of the data - meaning that we can have multiple versions of a file or directory of a server."
"IBM support is friendly, knowledgeable, and they always respond quickly. They've always been able to find the cause of my problem."
"Our customers have come to trust IBM."
"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."
"This solution could improve by introducing daily verifications and another repository."
"The initial setup is a bit complex and could be simpler."
"Desktop-laptop backups and backup over the WAN needs lot of improvisation. For DTLT there must be a provision to push agents from the management console."
"The support is very bad."
"The user interface needs to be improved. It's not as good as it could be."
"It lacks support for certain plugins, like SAP HANA, for example."
"It's not the best solution for big databases."
"There also needs to be single sign-on support."
"We are not so happy with the technical support because dealing with them is not easy. We have a very complicated environment, therefore I understand for a support person that it is not easy to troubleshoot it."
"Perhaps if they could add replication to a second site or third site from the same console, that would be helpful. Currently, we have to connect to another console."
"Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups."
"The deduplication must be perfect, and thus should be improved."
"It's difficult in terms of the configuration at set up. In our case, it required another admin, one person dedicated to the backup."
"The administration tools for GI need improvement, as the current assessment suggests shortcomings in the back-end system."
"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."
"There is room for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect, especially regarding its support for virtual environment backups."
Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews while IBM Spectrum Protect is ranked 17th in Backup and Recovery with 146 reviews. Dell Avamar is rated 7.6, while IBM Spectrum Protect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Spectrum Protect writes "Performance and recoveries are better, and customers are happier with performance". Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), whereas IBM Spectrum Protect is most compared with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Rubrik and IBM Storage Protect. See our Dell Avamar vs. IBM Spectrum Protect report.
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